Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream (review)

Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream appears at a time when millions of poor and working families are struggling to attain the American Dream. Economic globalization, technological change, and the seismic restructuring of the manufacturing economy into an hourglass service economy of haves and have nots have led to persistent poverty and declining real wages for most workers since the start of the new millennium. The labor movement, a major social force for combating poverty, has eroded under these same conditions, while recent and rapid increases in immigration to the United States have diversified the ranks of poor and working people, leading many labor unions to undertake new initiatives in immigrant labor organizing. Poverty politics are a central theme in these campaign months leading up to the U.S. presidential election in November 2008.

Ending Poverty in America is timely because the poverty rate in the United States has changed little since the 1960s era of the Great Society and civil rights movement. From 1959 through 1969, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2008b), the percentage of people who were poor declined from 22.4 percent to 12.1 percent. In 1970–2006, the poverty rate stabilized, fluctuating between 11.1 percent and 15.2 percent (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor and Smith, 2007). What is more, income inequality has sharpened since the 1960s. The U.S. Gini coefficient for household incomes, a leading statistical indicator of income inequality published by the Census Bureau (2008a), increased steadily from .386 in 1968 to .470 in 2006.

Ending Poverty in America is a comprehensive, multifaceted and synthetic treatment of poverty and poverty policy. An inter-disciplinary assessment of poverty by an all-star group of academic and activist contributors, the book is co-edited by a distinguished team who are associated with the University of North Carolina’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity that was founded in 2005 by former U.S. Senator and presidential contender John Edwards (D-North Carolina). The editorial team is composed of Sen. Edwards, law professor Marion Crain, and sociologist Arne L. Kalleberg, 2008 President of the American Sociological Association.

The book is organized into five parts that address the causes and changing character of poverty and that assess a wide array of mainly government-sponsored anti-poverty measures, including “labor market and work supports, asset-building programs, and programs designed to build social capital by strengthening family and community.”(8) Among the highlights of the chapters dealing with the causes and changing character of poverty are David Shipler’s multi-dimensional depiction of poverty not only in economic and materialist terms, but also as powerlessness and vulnerability; Sara McLanahan’s demographic analysis of fragile families and poverty, and review of liberal and conservative policies; and William Julius Wilson’s analysis of the development and impact of poverty concentration in inner-city black neighborhoods on a wide range of social problems, and call for “economic policies that produce tight labor markets” that address “inner-city joblessness.”(94)

Ending Poverty in America also assesses a wide range of government-promoted “policies to help low-wage workers and families in economic distress.”(7) These include Katherine Newman’s assessment of several policies for encouraging the upward social mobility of the working poor, such as access to college education, state-earned income tax credits, extending health insurance coverage to poor and near-poor children, and extending affordable childcare to working poor families; Harry Holzer’s call for education and training policies that promote early skill building, high school completion, college attendance, training opportunities for working adult poor, and expanded protections against the risks of job loss and displacement; Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro’s call for individual asset policies, such as individual development accounts, and progressive taxation for reducing the race gap in wealth; Ronald Mincy and Hillard Pouncy’s assessment of policies for improving the life chances of young black men...